Monday and Wednesday 1:00-2:40pm 

In Computational Art Practices: Physical Computing Machines students will be invited to iterate, test, hack, build, and experiment with a myriad of art+technology-based skill sets. We will learn to work with a collection of digital and analog tools across software and hardware applications for prototyping. The course has been designed to provide students with some core foundations of new media programming tools, basic principles of physical computing, and mechanical tinkering for practitioners. We will take a critical examination of a breadth of creative practitioners from around the world, discussing the many moods, emotional modifications and fantastical iterations they have brought to fruition. The course will examine the rich catalog across new media and televisual mediations from Nam June Paik to Behnaz Farahi and across the expressive mechanical objects from Rebecca Horn to Arthur Ganson. Our series of programmed outputs will serve to interrogate the discipline's well documented histories of fusing together politics and economics—propaganda and pop culture—global geographies and their associated cultural values. Simultaneously, we will be assisted in situating our productions within semiotics, technology, biomimicry, and architecture using a combination of textual analysis and video screenings. We will actively engage, be critical in our participation and create a space for creative enjoyment.

Monday and Wednesday 10:00-11:40am 

This course prepares students to undertake long-term projects that incorporate digital technology or utilize digital tools. Students will propose and develop self-directed projects using methodologies and processes aligned with their own interests. 

This course also serves as the Springboard course for the Digital Studies and Methods Certificate. 

Instructor: Triton Mobley – triton.mobley@pitt.edu

In this introductory course we will explore a range of “choreographies of touch” foundational to fiber art. 

Techniques covered will include: Needlework (embroidery, breading/sequins embellishment), Looping (crochet, netting), and Weaving (spinning, tapestry weaving). These techniques will be applied in the creation of a final creative project. 

Fiber arts have a rich and complex history in all human cultures. Example of work from historic and contemporary sources, and the position and perception of fiber arts in contemporary debates will be examined. Lectures, readings, and discussion will provide exposure to key ideas about contemporary art practice as well as providing historical frameworks to contextualize classwork. 

Instructor: Jose Santiago Perez – jsp137@pitt.edu 

This course fulfills the Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences General Education Requirement: Creative Work.

Monday and Wednesday 10:00-11:40am 

Photo Ecologies reclaims photography’s most elemental origins through analog and cameraless experimentation with light, time, and material. Embracing slowness and hands-on processes, students create image-objects using sunlight, plants, chemistry, and chance, offering a tactile, ephemeral counterpoint to contemporary image culture. 

Instructor: Melissa Catanese – mac527@pitt.edu

Tuesday and Thursday 1:00-2:40pm 

This course is designed to introduce students to the artistic medium of animation, including various related processes and animators. Through a combination of screenings, discussions, examples, and hands-on tutorials, this course will build a strong based comprehension of the history and issues related to the field of animation. The emphasis in this course is not on technical mastery but on understanding digital media technologies as tools for creative cultural practice and production. This is an advanced course designed for students to intensely experiment and explore the moving digital image in an art context. This course explores the basics of a wide variety of styles, including narrative and experimental work in stop motion, rotoscope animation, and AI generative works, through use of software such as Adobe After Effects, Photoshop, and DiffusionBee. Additionally, this class rill require use of Adobe Illustrator, digital drawing, photography, and related photographic equipment. 

Instructor: Scott Andrew – scottandrew@pitt.edu

Tuesday and Thursday 3:00-4:40pm 

This studio is an introduction to audio-video and animation production within eh artistic practice. Coursework explores the making and critiquing of moving-image and audio works across a variety of contexts, and takes an active approach in learning how to produce your own new media works using both standard and experimental production techniques. Though analysis of contemporary and historical examples, class discussions, demonstrations, and hands-on studio workshops, we will build comprehension of related histories and theories; explore the meanings and consequences of ubiquitous broadcast and social media; and learn how to interrogate and wield media paradigms to challenge their influences in our lives.

Instructor: Scott Andrew – scottandrew@pitt.edu 

This course fulfills the Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences General Education Requirement: Creative Work